A learning adventure where children stop studying their territory and start changing it.
↓ Begin the journeyMost educational programs ask children to receive. We invite them to act, and to see that their action matters.
Agency is the belief that I can shape what happens around me. It is what separates a child who worries about the river from a child who does something for it. It can't be taught with a worksheet. It has to be lived: a child needs to discover what they are good at, feel something real that needs care, and then carry out an action and see it land.
Every mission, every screen and every teacher prompt serves one outcome: a child who has changed something real in their own place, and knows it.
These findings come from a 2021 survey of 10,000 young people aged 16–25 across ten countries, published in The Lancet Planetary Health. The common thread is not a lack of information. It is a feeling that nothing they do matters.
Schools are asked to respond. Many curricula, including Colombia's, now require socioemotional competencies, but give teachers no practical way to build them.
And children grow up as strangers to the rivers and forests that will shape their future: without a bond with their place, there is no care.
We developed our first prototype in Santander, Colombia. It helped us explore a local response to a global challenge: how children can recover a sense of possibility and act meaningfully in their own communities. We are now building a model that adapts to different territories while preserving the core pedagogy of agency.
The story, the missions and the places change with each territory. What travels is the pedagogical architecture.
Hickman et al., “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change”, The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021.
The story gives children a regenerative lens through which to understand the world they are growing into. It begins with concerns they may already recognize, then opens possibilities for resilience, connection and renewal. An unfolding adventure invites them to make choices, explore different paths and discover a meaningful role in their territory’s future.
Research on young people finds that constructive hope, which acknowledges how serious a problem is while trusting that people can act on it, goes together with pro-environmental behavior, while hope built on denial does not (Ojala, 2012). Our story starts from what children feel and opens a path to act.
The story unlocks seven missions that move the child from the inside out: from who am I to what I changed. The arc never changes; the order, the competency and the evidence of each mission are fixed. That is what makes the outcomes comparable across schools.
● The school chooses: individual or in teams. Missions 1–4 are always each child's inner journey; from mission 5, each school decides whether children design and act alone or as a team.
The core pedagogical journey stays the same in every school and territory.
The characters, the mystery, the landscape and the local problems come from each territory. It is not a visual wrapper over the same content: the regenerative story is told in their own place, with their river, their elders and their questions.
The complexity and scope of the story and missions adapt to each age group, while the core pedagogical journey remains the same.
Each mission carries a knowledge pill aligned with the Basic Learning Rights (DBA) of Colombia's Ministry of National Education (MEN). A character needs that knowledge to move forward, so children use it as a tool, not as a lesson.
DBA are the MEN's official reference for what each grade should learn. The alignment is our own work, not an MEN endorsement.
“Ten centimeters in two minutes! Thirty more to reach the stone.”
If it keeps rising at the same rate, in how many minutes does it reach the stone? Children build a table and find out: 6 minutes.
“Describes and interprets variations of dependence between quantities and represents them with graphs.”
Our first prototype brought the pedagogy into real classrooms, using basic digital tools alongside field exploration and classroom reflection. It ran in a school in Barichara, Santander, with grades 2 to 9, integrated into regular classes and led by the school's own teachers.
They dramatized the story, ran debates and enriched missions on their own initiative. That signals adoption, not compliance.
Environmental awareness moved from an abstract idea to belonging and responsibility.
Missions sparked conversations between generations: what the children found at the river, what their grandparents remembered.
Natural science, social studies and inquiry in one experience, aligned with the school's environmental project (PRAE).
water bodies identified and georeferenced by eight teams of children, in just two weeks.
“Before, the creeks were so clear you could swim in them. Now they are drier and murky.”Testimony gathered by the children
One unexpected result revealed the potential of children’s inquiry: in just two weeks, eight teams identified and georeferenced 153 water bodies. Their work showed how a learning adventure can also become a citizen science initiative, generating local awareness and information that can help communities decide what to care for and investigate next.
Building on their research, children design Actions of Hope. Ideas from our first prototype included caring for stray animals, a short film about water, local radio messages and a mural, clean-ups and native reforestation, and a community activity in the town square.
Honest caveat: the outcomes of the first prototype are qualitative, observed by teachers and us. That's why the platform now measures before, during and after (see below).
We developed the first prototype in a territory we knew well. The experience gave us a reason to reach further: children need opportunities to make sense of a changing world and discover that they can help shape it. Their initiatives can also engage families and communities, extending the impact beyond the classroom.
Research shows that children’s environmental learning and action can influence their families’ attitudes and everyday practices. Community-based projects also show how children can bring people together around local change. This is part of why we want to scale Áurea Terra: the potential impact can extend beyond each child to the people and places around them.
Parents of 10–14-year-olds who took part in a climate education program grew more concerned about climate change than a comparison group (292 adults, 238 households).
Lawson et al., Nature Climate Change, 2019In a randomized trial with 30 Girl Scout troops, an energy program increased the energy-saving behaviors reported by girls and their parents, still visible after more than seven months.
Boudet et al., Nature Energy, 2016In a 15-week program, 55 children aged 10–12 in three communities presented to local authorities, planted trees, created a community garden and hosted an exhibition for more than 100 family and community members.
Trott, Action Research, 2019These studies support the potential of the model; they are not results of Áurea Terra.
We now have a functional prototype in Spanish and English, designed for rapid adaptation to other languages and local contexts. AI-assisted development and very low initial infrastructure costs help us build a scalable model while preserving the essential pedagogy. Our aim is to bring this experience to as many schools and territories as possible.
The child's app: adventure, field notebook and the mystery, which fills up with their own artifacts: their superpower, their map, their action.
A class pulse at a glance, a queue of which child needs attention, and a facilitation guide that flags the delicate moments of each mission.
A school describes its territory. AI drafts the seven missions in the local story. The team reviews, edits and publishes.
Simple socioemotional assessment tools help children and teachers follow changes in hope, belonging, connection to nature and perceived agency throughout the journey. These reflections also contribute to our impact assessment.
Áurea Terra is designed as a financially self-sustaining model for social and ecological impact. Annual school licenses and institutional partnerships aim to sustain the program and generate a surplus we can reinvest in future missions, Actions of Hope and school-based social and environmental projects. Foundational sponsorship helps launch this path and expand access for schools that need support.
A school license and a sponsorship are different things. The license gives a school access to the program; a sponsorship budget also covers implementation and accompaniment, funds for the Actions of Hope and impact reporting. That is why their values differ.
Foundational sponsors can help us launch the next stage, reach more children and build a path toward financial sustainability. Our calculator shows how the scale and timing depend on the assumptions we validate with schools and partners. Move them to see how they affect our ability to sustain and expand the impact.
What the model simplifies: schools pay monthly (in reality often once a year, which helps cash), there is no inflation or tax, and every intake brings the same number of schools. Price is the most uncertain number; a survey of school principals is ready to validate it.
Our biggest gap is commercial: a small founding team can't open school doors across Colombia, let alone Latin America. So we grow through local partners who already work with schools and communities. They help adapt the experience to each territory, accompany the schools and expand the reach of the program.
We are gathering a small circle of people who have built things: founders, investors, educators and operators. People who will tell us the truth, help us decide, and open the right doors.
Your time is a gift too. We'd bring the questions we most want to get right: when and how to raise, our financial plan, and how to build fair partnerships.
We are looking for foundational impact partners to help Áurea Terra get off the ground and grow toward financial sustainability. Your sponsorship can fund essential launch components and full or partial scholarships for schools, helping more children become active participants in their communities’ regeneration.
Áurea Terra is run by Corporación Origen Circular, a registered, externally audited non-profit in Colombia.
Our foundational partners will receive lasting recognition for helping make this journey possible, as our story and impact continue to unfold.
A sponsorship is more than a school license: it covers implementation and accompaniment, teacher training, materials, funds for the Actions of Hope, impact measurement and reporting. Citizen science findings are shared and reviewed, never children's personal data.
Choose a school you would like to support. Your company, community or group of friends can pool contributions to bring Áurea Terra to that school and its territory. Depending on the scope of the sponsorship, we can also include a second school that could not otherwise afford the program.
Estimate based on our Seed budget: $10,000 brings the full journey to one school of about 100 children for a school year, including accompaniment, materials, Action of Hope funds and reporting.
Pro bono hours, in-kind support, and introductions to schools, funders or partners. Or take a seat in the Circle of Mentors.
As the project develops, we would welcome conversations with our foundational partners about future forms of collaboration, including potential business partnerships if we choose to establish a company.
| Seed | River | Forest | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lasting recognition as a foundational partner: your name in the app and at the closing ceremony | |||
| Impact report: Compass results, stories, photos* | |||
| Donation certificate from Origen Circular | |||
| Tax-deductible receipt (US, via fiscal sponsor) | |||
| A seat in the Circle of Mentors | |||
| Curated citizen science findings from participating schools | |||
| A shared space where children exchange discoveries, built with your support | |||
| Visit a school and join an Action of Hope | |||
| A mission named after your organization |
* Children's photos only with family consent. Indicative budgets in USD, based on the costs of our first prototype (≈ $7,000 per school cycle in 2025) plus transfer and fiscal-sponsor fees, impact measurement and reporting. To be refined together.
A bank transfer to our Colombian non-profit. Simplest, and the whole gift arrives (minus bank fees). We issue an official donation certificate and send a report on how it was used.
A direct gift is not tax-deductible. If you need a tax write-off, choose Option B.
You give to a US public charity that acts as our fiscal sponsor. It issues your tax receipt, so the gift can be deducted, and transfers the funds to us. A fee of around 5% covers their work, and it's already built into our plan budgets.
Giving from another country? Write to us and we'll find the best route for you. Tax treatment depends on your own situation; please check with your advisor.